Andrew Wilkie (Clark, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Housing. The housing crisis is getting worse, particularly in Tasmania, with increasing homelessness; too little crisis, social and supported accommodation; unaffordable rents; and unattainable homeownership. Clearly this is not good enough and we need to act now. So will the government commit to working with all levels of government to remedy things and, for starters, to extend the National Rental Affordability Scheme, increase Commonwealth rent assistance and revisit investment property tax reform?

Julie Collins (Franklin, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Small Business) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to thank the member for Clark for his question. I know that he, like many people in this place, is concerned about those Australians who are struggling to find safe and secure housing, particularly affordable housing at the moment. We certainly understand that safe and affordable housing is central to the security and dignity of all Australians. We want every Australian to have the security of having a roof over their head but, of course, we're dealing with increasing housing affordability costs. Far too many Australians are being hit by increasing rents, and far too many Australians are still struggling to purchase a home. Sadly, far too many Australians are facing, or at risk of, homelessness today.

The situation is completely unacceptable, which is why, of course, we've hit the ground running to deliver on our ambitious housing reform agenda that we took to the election. It was a very significant reform right across the housing system. Indeed, we want to make it easier for Australians to buy a home. We want to increase the supply of housing to reduce overcrowding and to reduce rents. We want to improve access to social and affordable housing, and we want to address the needs of those who find themselves at risk of homelessness or who are indeed homeless. Importantly, we want to ensure that investments and reforms are both long term and sustainable.

To this end, we've brought forward the start of the Regional First Home Buyer Guarantee to 1 October, and that will allow up to 10,000 eligible Australians to enter into homeownership sooner and help ease the pressure in the rental market in our regions. We've acted quickly to unlock up to $575 million through the National Housing Infrastructure Facility to invest in more social and affordable housing sooner. Of course, we're doing that while we wait for the Housing Australia Future Fund, which is our significant $10 billion investment that will build 30,000 new social and affordable homes in the first five years.

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The minister will just take a break. I'm going to give the call to the member for Clark on a point of order.

Andrew Wilkie (Clark, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Speaker—on relevance. The community's very keen to hear the answer—in particular regarding the National Rental Affordability Scheme, or NRAS; Commonwealth rent assistance; and whether there's any possibility of investment property tax reform.

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member. The question was broad, and the minister is being relevant. I'm listening to her carefully. I give the call to the minister.

Julie Collins (Franklin, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Small Business) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Clark. We also, of course, want to develop a National Housing and Homelessness Plan, and we do want to work with the other tiers of government. There's no one tier of government that's going to be able to solve this alone. We've had two meetings already of state and territory housing ministers. The first, which we had in July, was the first meeting in almost five years because, of course, we inherited a system where those on the other side did very little when it came to housing affordability across this country. We're also going to introduce a National Housing Supply and Affordability Council to ensure that the Commonwealth does play a leadership role in ensuring housing supply and improving housing affordability. There'll be details on these reforms in the budget tonight.

Importantly, the initiatives and reforms need to be sustainable and lead to long-term, permanent housing for those that need it most. We learnt the lesson the hard way from those opposite when we saw important housing programs abolished, like one of the ones the member refers to. NRAS was abolished, of course, by Tony Abbott back in 2014. The reforms that we're proposing will permanently boost the supply of affordable housing and take pressure off the rental market as well as addressing social housing problems. When too many Australians don't have a safe place to call home, we can't afford to waste a day, and we absolutely won't.